Cellist Steven Isserlis once again displays his ingenuity and innovation in programming on this 2010 release combining four works for cello and orchestra that wouldn't even exist without him: all arrangements were made at his personal request, each one by the arranger of his personal choice. The most radical reworking is the opening selection, based on a suite composed for cello and orchestra by a 19-year-old Debussy, which only survived in a version for cello and piano. In her imaginative reconstruction of, or rather replacement for, Debussy's original composition, Sally Beamish uses the piece as the opening movement, going on to construct orchestral arrangements of four other Debussy works from the same period. Isserlis also includes revisions of two Ravel songs, Prokofiev's incomplete Concertino and Ernest Bloch's From Jewish Life, ending with the movement entitled Prayer. Throughout the fascinating programme, Isserlis is backed by the Tapiola Sinfonietta conducted by Gábor Takács-Nagy.

In this new chamber recording, Steven Isserlis together with his regular collaborator, fortepianist Robert Levin, presents a magisterial and long-awaited compendium of Beethoven’s complete works for cello and piano, including Beethoven’s arrangement of his Op 17 Horn Sonata. The use of the fortepiano opens up a wealth of sonic possibilities for these works.

Hailed by Classic FM as “one of today’s most exciting young composers” Rebecca Dale is a London based composer, working most often with large orchestral and choral forces in the worlds of cinema and theatre. Night Seasons is an album about hope, looking for the light in difficult times, written during a time of personal dif- ficulty while her father was terminally ill. With works written for choir and cello it strives to be a hopeful album, reaching for the wonder around us. Rebecca Dale says “It’s been one of the great privileges of my life to be able to write for cellist heroes of mine to whom I grew up listening. I also got to have fun setting some famous poems… I am indebted to everyone who has created this album with me”.

Cellists have cause to be thankful for the impracticality and swift demise of the arpeggione, which allowed the appropriation of Schubert’s wonderful sonata for their own instrument. Dénes Várjon’s 1851 Érard lends characterful zest both here and in Chopin, while bonuses include Steven Isserlis’s own transcriptions of songs by both composers.

Belying its young composer’s reputation as the enfant terrible of early Soviet music, ‘the most popular cello sonata of the twentieth century’—Steven Isserlis’s verdict on the Shostakovich—takes its place alongside two other Russian masterpieces, from pre-Revolutionary Prokofiev to Kabalevsky in the Khrushchev era.

If Britten’s Cello Suite No 3 is the undisputed masterpiece here, the other works are no less deserving of attention, Frank Merrick’s Suite in the eighteenth-century style being a particular delight. As ever, Steven Isserlis’s booklet notes offer fascinatingly personal perspectives on the composers and their music.

An important release which again demonstrates Steven Isserlis’s deep commitment to the music of John Tavener. The realization of the album is movingly detailed in a booklet note which provides an eloquent counterpoint and commentary to the performances.

A thrilling album from Steven Isserlis couples the ground-breaking Prokofiev Cello Concerto from the 1930s with Shostakovich's eruptive response to it written for Rostropovich in 1959. These seminal works mark the cello's coming of age, enveloping its trademark rhapsodic lyricism in a newly visceral passion. Om this recording, Paavo Järvi makes his Hyperion debut, conducting an ebullient Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and providing the ideal foil to Isserlis's impassioned virtuosity.

Bach wrote three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord. Scholars estimate they were composed in the early 1740s, possibly for Carl Fredrich Abel, son of Bach's colleague Christian Ferdinand Abel. They are paired here with Scarlatti's Gamba Sonata and a Violin Sonata by Handel. These works are performed by violinist Robin Michael, cellist Steven Isserlis and harpsichordist Richard Egarr in a program of haunting tranquility.

As the centenaries of various events of the First World War are being commemorated, we are reminded of the great battles and the large-scale suffering. To imagine what day-to-day life may have been like in the trenches in Flanders is more difficult, however, 100 years later and with no living survivors of the war to bear witness. Poems and paintings can give us some idea – but, as this disc from Steven Isserlis proves, so can music! The main, more conventional section of the programme is a selection of cello works composed around the time of the war, by composers from three of the countries involved in it: France, Britain and Austria.